


Liar, L-eye-r

by Swashbuckler



Category: DCU, DCU (Comics), The Flash (Comics)
Genre: Canon Disabled Character, Domestic Fluff, Fainting, Gen, Glass Eye, Hijinks & Shenanigans, Parent-Child Relationship, Pranks and Practical Jokes, Squick, Teasing, Tricksters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-14
Updated: 2017-09-14
Packaged: 2018-12-29 22:08:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12094479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Swashbuckler/pseuds/Swashbuckler
Summary: The Trickster has a lot of fun with his glass eye.





	Liar, L-eye-r

**Author's Note:**

> I just really like the idea of James having a glass eye for whatever reason :')

James had been, for once, not up to anything. He had been grocery shopping. For actual food. That wasn’t for throwing. Or exclusively made of sugar. He was being good! Sure, he was snacking as he shopped, but everybody did that. 

“Did you see that guy? He has a glass eye,” a middle age woman whispered loudly to her group of middle-aged friends in a way that said plainly that she intended to be heard. James looked up, mouth full of Oreos, eyebrows ascending up into his hair. The cluster of women were eyeing him with a combination of awestruck fear and distaste across the cereal aisle, as if waiting expectantly for him to leave their presence, head hung in shame. James let his eyes go wide as he grinned at the cluster of women. He licked his tongue across his cookie-blackened teeth. 

“Sure do! I made it myself and everything,” James said, deliberately winking his left, prosthetic eye conspiratorially.

One of the women coughed. “You-” she raised her chin defiantly, tucking her hair behind one ear, “you made it yourself?” she asked skeptically. 

“Of course,” James scoffed, shovelling another cookie into his mouth. “I ‘arved my ini’ials ina ba’ o’ i’ an’ ewyfin.”

“What,” the woman asked flatly, wrinkling her nose. James rolled his eyes, swallowed his mouthful of Oreo and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. “I said,” he drawled in the tone of someone scolding a child for not listening, “I carved my initials in the back of it and everything!” He beamed at them, taking the cookie box in his right hand and reaching up his left hand to touch his false eye. “Want to see?” he offered cheerfully. The women screamed and scattered from the aisle, trolleys rattling as they bolted. “It’s really no trouble, it comes out really easily!” James called after them, watching them leave. He snickered to himself and plucked another Oreo from the box before dumping it in the shopping basket dangling from his arm. _Amateurs,_ he thought fondly, twisting the Oreo apart and licking the cream. 

It wasn’t the first time people had tried to give him grief about his eye. Piper had told him it would happen. The Trickster had simply given his friend a coy shrug. 

“Oh, I’m sure I’ll be able to handle it~”

Piper had snorted at James’ innocently fluttering eyelashes, his chin resting on his hands like a posing vintage starlet. “Perhaps that’s what we should be worried about. Look, I’m just warning you now, people’s approach to disabilities is often- clumsy,” he settled on after a pause, “to say the least. Consider this me warning you now that you’ll probably get some really stupid questions thrown your way.” 

“Piiiiiiper, come oooooon, I just said I’ll handle it!”

* * *

“Can you see out of it?” 

James’ clapped his mouth shut to keep himself from gaping at the man. “Yes,” he said, blinking. 

“What, really?!”

“Oh yeah,” James said enthusiastically, warming to his theme. “You know, with fake ones, you can even see out the back of your head!”

“No. Way.”

“Oh yeah~ See, this is how it works…”

* * *

He’d taken it out to clean it during lunch. He’d washed his hands, got out his little sterilising kit, and done everything like he was supposed to. He didn’t do anything wrong.

Except perhaps overlook that doing this at one of the tables in the diner at the shopping mall wasn’t the best idea.

“Was that your eye?” James looked up at the horrified waitress who was standing a few feet from his table, a notepad in one hand and nothing in the other poised over it. 

“Oh, yeah, it happens all the time,” shrugged James as he dropped his prosthetic into the glass of salt water. “Sometimes it just-” he stuck his clean finger in his mouth and made a popping noise against his cheek, miming his eye plopping out of his empty eye socket, “-falls out in the middle of a meeting. You know how it is,” he said jovially. The waitress’ eyes rolled back into her head and she dropped into a faint, collapsing beside her dropped pen.

“Whoops.”

* * *

“Where did you get it from? A doctor?” 

“Actually, no. See, I came home one day and my son was playing with marbles and-”

* * *

“Your eyes are lopsided.” 

“Well at least my _face_ isn't lopsided!”

* * *

The questions might have annoyed anyone else, but James was not one to waste an opportunity, and what kind of Trickster would he be if he didn’t have a little fun with people over it? 

There was one question that cropped up far more than all the other ridiculous queries he got about his glass eye, though, and that one was his favourite. 

_“How did you lose your eye?”_

It was always asked so brazenly, so bluntly, so insistently hungry for an answer that people were practically begging to be tricked.

“So, how did you lose your eye?” 

“They didn’t match when I was born so I sent one back.” 

“I put it down and just couldn’t find it again!

“Had a run in with the Welsh Mafia.”

“Turns out washing machines don’t just eat your socks.” 

“See, when everyone kept telling me I had my father’s eyes, I didn’t realise that was because he wanted them _back!_ ”

“Ran out of cash in a game of cards and _really_ wanted to call the other guy’s bluff.” 

“Well _someone_ has to keep an eye on the Flash!”

“Magpie stole it when I was up a tree because it was so sparkly.”

“I was down a juggling ball and well, needs must.” 

“Len got mad because I ate all his ice cream and demanded payback.”

“Digger ate it.” 

“Dad, how did you lose your eye?” 

James looked up from shuffling cards. Billy’s happy, cheerfully squishy twelve year old face was watching him with shining, awestruck eyes across the diner's table. James grinned to himself, splitting the deck and riffling the two stacks together. 

“Was it from fighting the Flash?” Billy asked, his face lighting up.

“Ah, now, you see, what happened to my eye was...” He trailed off conspiratorially. “One of my toys was faulty and it blew up in my face when I tried to fix it,” he finished simply, tapping the shuffled deck against the table matter of factly and setting it down between them. 

“Oh,” Billy said with a wince. “Did it hurt?” James shrugged. 

“I’ve still got the bit of shrapnel they extracted from the original.”

“Ewwww,” Billy grinned. “What was it? A screw or a bit of plastic or-?”

“It was a Barbie shoe,” James said with a pained wince. "Heels are deadly at any size, Bill. Remember that." He leant back in the booth seat and nodding at the deck. “Go on, your turn.” 

“Okay,” Billy said, cutting the deck in half and taking the bottom half and shuffling himself.

“Here we go,” Mindy said, placing the tray down on the diner's patterned table. “Don’t know why that waitress wouldn’t come and serve us,” Mindy muttered to James who shook his head slowly.

“No idea.” 

“Budge up, mister,” Mindy said, nudging her hip against James’ as she perched on the edge of the booth. James gave a dramatic sigh and slid across the booth until he was pressed against the wooden panelling separating them from the table on the other side.

“This better?” 

Mindy stuck her tongue out at him, shoving her bag under the table. “What’s your dad been teaching you then?” Mindy asked cheerfully as Billy fumbled with the cards. She didn’t miss the way James preened at being called ‘dad’ as he wriggled closer to her again. 

“How to shuffle ready to do card tricks with,” Billy chirped happily. “And he told me about what happened to his eye!” 

“Oh, you told him about that, then?” Mindy asked, unwrapping her burger. “Didn’t think you would’ve told him that story; it's kind of embarrassing.” 

“Yeah, I know,” James smiled bashfully as he took his meal from the tray. “But sometimes things just go wrong with when you’re trying to make balloon animals for the Mayor while on roller skates!”

Billy looked up from his mess of cards, his mouth open as he frowned at his dad. “But-” He caught James’ eye. His dad was desperately trying not to laugh as he held a finger up to his lips and winked his false eye at him while Mindy admired the vintage posters around the diner.

“Oh, little Majee, you have so much still to learn~”

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally going to end with James trying to trick Billy and Mindy foiling his plans....and then I had a better idea~


End file.
